In one of the posts on Herman Cain’s candidacy discussed on Campaign Desk Tuesday, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight calls for more discussion about the quadrennial issue of how much coverage the press should devote to different presidential candidates:
This is a question, however, that needs to be discussed more openly. What are the appropriate criteria by which the press should determine how much coverage — and what type of coverage — to give to each presidential candidate? Should it be based on polls? On who has taken the most concrete steps toward actually running? On the credentials of the candidates? On elite sentiment? On site traffic and click-through rates? If you accept that some candidates should be given more coverage than others (and some people don’t accept that), what should the ratios be?
We agree! And we want to hear your thoughts. Which of these factors should drive allocation of the media’s attention? And are there others (depth of engagement with specific issues, perhaps?) that should be taken into account? Let us know in the comments section.
Cain, a black Tea Bag'n Republican, is "sexy" vis vis coverage. Fred Karger, a white gay Obamaesque Republican, is ignored. Crazy is sexy & gets coverage, like grifter Sarah Palin or media buffoon Donald Trump.
#1 Posted by VonLmo, CJR on Wed 1 Jun 2011 at 04:32 PM
One of my favorite CJR pieces from the archives discusses a little known 1992 Democratic presidential candidate named Larry Agran, who, despite notching some poll numbers that were better than those of some of his still-remembered cohorts, was excluded from debates and largely ignored by the media.
You can read it here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20071005164044/http://backissues.cjrarchives.org/year/92/2/opinion.asp
This is a tough question, and one that has no easy brightline answer--but in general, I'd like the press to err on the side of inclusion. Let's see a wide range of candidates in the coverage mix, especially if they represent ideas, constituencies, or philosophies that vary from the mainstream.
#2 Posted by Clint Hendler, CJR on Wed 1 Jun 2011 at 05:13 PM
Candidates who are actually running for office ought to be treated as candidates who are running for office. People who organize bus tours to promote themselves, their books, and their million dollar homes should be ignored. People who are never really going to run, but whose hair might, should be ignored. In other words, ignore the obvious media whores and cover people who have stated their desire to be a candidate. Cain is in, Palin and Trump are out.
#3 Posted by Carl Isaacson, CJR on Wed 1 Jun 2011 at 10:01 PM
This is something I have thought about. I don't think the question is answerable in the form Nate Silver gave to it:
What are the appropriate criteria by which the press should determine how much coverage — and what type of coverage — to give to each presidential candidate?
If you leave it like that, you just get a list of things that maybe ought to count--ability to win, standing in polls, passionate supporters, interesting ideas, credibility with the elite--and a lot of argument about how much these various factors should count.
In other words, you wind up at the end of the inquiry right where you began it.
The only way out, in my view, is to pose a prior question: what do the shapers of the coverage believe is the purpose of campaign journalism? What do they think this 18-month narrative is supposed to be about? If we have an answer to that, we can get a fix on CJR's question.
So: If campaign coverage is supposed to be about... discovering who has "what it takes" (Richard Ben Cramer) to win the nomination and the election... then the narrative is about winning and overcoming odds and the decision rule should be: cover the candidates who are likely to affect the outcome. Ignore those who won't.
Purpose gives you the answer to priorities.
If the campaign narrative is supposed to be... a contest of ideas about the future of the country... and that's what the shapers of the coverage truly believe, then they would be advised to employ a decision rule in which the most compelling, important and consequential ideas are the "stars," no matter which candidates they come from.
If the campaign narrative is really... a cultural ritual through which the American nation acts out its inner conflicts and confronts its meanest and most idealized selves... then coverage should look beyond positioning and positions to the revelation of the American character. The candidates who reveal the most about where America is today thus deserve the most coverage.
In this post from my blog...
http://pressthink.org/2010/08/the-citizens-agenda-in-campaign-coverage/
I argue that the purpose of campaign coverage should be to formulate a citizen's agenda, a reliable and empirically-sound answer to "what do Americans want this campaign to be about?" and then to get that agenda addressed. If that's the right purpose (I think it is, but you may not buy my argument!) then candidates get more coverage when they address the citizens agenda, and less when they avoid it and obfuscate.
Now I know what you're thinking. Campaign coverage isn't so one-dimensional, Jay. It's about who's gonna win, and the contest of ideas, and the cultural spectacle, plus the citizens agenda. Which appears to put us back where we started: a list of plausible criteria, and endless arguments about how much weight to give each.
But no. What matters, I said, is what the shapers of the coverage think is its purpose. Most of people covering presidential politics believe that campaign coverage is properly about who's gonna win. They think the contest of ideas is for pointy-headed professors who don't understand how the grubby world of getting elected actually works. They may not own up to either belief, but based on my 25 years of watching this campaign press, this is what they actually think: 80 percent horse race, and maybe 20 percent cultural spectacle. So what they should do is come clean about the purpose of what they are doing, and then the criteria for who deserves coverage will fall into place.
But this would require a confrontation with their own ideas about politics and democracy. There is actually no appetite for that in the campaign press. The overwhelming preference is to table forever these large questions of purpose and get on with the business of c
#4 Posted by Jay Rosen, CJR on Wed 1 Jun 2011 at 10:53 PM
As director of The Politics & Journalism Semester (http://www.wcpj.org) and a former DNC press secretary and presidential campaign communications director (Paul Simon, 1988), I addressed the question of coverage of presidential candidates in this Nieman Reports piece in 2004: "Why Political Journalism Fails at Handicapping the Race"
http://www.terrymichael.net/PDF%20Files/Nieman_PrezPolNewsCoverage.pdf
#5 Posted by Terry Michael, CJR on Thu 2 Jun 2011 at 10:29 AM